While breakfast was on the way, I took a shower and read the day’s itinerary. The Games began at midday with an uninterrupted eight-hour session in a capsule. Then dinner and a review of the best moments of the day, plus a mandatory interaction with the media. Then free time and a few activities to choose from, including a couple of concerts, no-rules robot battles and dancing… The organizers approved of any activity that could lead to romantic connection, intrigue and scandal. The real part of the Games was just as entertaining to the viewers as the virtual part.
At eleven, when I’d already had breakfast, Kerry called me on the comm. My assistant examined my face closely and seemed pleased.
“You look refreshed. Sleep did you good. Get ready; I’ll be coming to get you in an hour. Octius is hosting a briefing to remind you all of the rules, then it’s into the fray!”
I spent that half an hour in my room, still reading the stories of the other champions. I had no desire to interact with the other contestants after what happened last night. Then Kerry came in, took me to the immersion level and showed me to the room set aside for me.
Each contestant had their own isolated immersion room, and it was three times bigger than any non-citizen cell. Apart from a capsule, it contained a sofa, a chair, a shower room and a closet. The refrigerator brimmed with snacks and drinks. If I wanted to, I could live here without risking any contact with the other contestants. I would have happily done that, but billions were watching. I couldn’t show cowardice. Like Uncle Nick said, you have to look your problems in the eye, not hide from them.
Soon a Snowstorm engineer appeared and helped me into the capsule, almost identical to the one I got as a reward for hitting my first maximum Threat level, but it was the newest version: the Altera Vita II. Kerry tactfully left the room and I got undressed and climbed inside.
“Ready?” the engineer asked, and I gave him a thumbs-up. “The first immersion for each contestant can only be initiated externally.” He looked at his watch. “To avoid… Three! Two! One! Starting!”
Intragel filled the capsule instantly. It just sprayed in from everywhere, there was a click, and suddenly I was in an endless space filled with bright light. Others began to appear in black circles around me — in their Dis bodies, but with ordinary basic clothing with variations for class and gender.
“Greetings, contestants!” came a thunderous voice from above.
Guy Barron Octius appeared before us, at least eighteen feet tall so that everyone could see him. Waving his hand, he spoke in a relaxed manner:
“Alright, folks! You know the most important thing about the Games, and if you don’t, then it sucks to be you! You should have read the materials we handed out instead of partying all night.”
“Can’t I just sleep it off in the tavern?” an elf girl whined. I recognized her as Anna. She was even more beautiful here than in real life. “There’s a tavern somewhere, right?”
“Do as you wish,” Octius waved a hand amid laughter and complaining from the rest. “But I’m about to hold the traditional briefing before your first immersion into the Cursed Chasm. As you know, we change the mechanics a little each year, so that those who participated before don’t have an advantage over the rest. I don’t mean you, Joseph, although experience doesn’t seem to help you at all.”
The little gnome Meister bowed with a grin.
Octius unfolded a piece of parchment and read:
“The rules of the Demonic Games are unchanged. All begin anew, but they keep their skills and abilities, both from their class and those obtained through other means, with the exception of divine abilities, which are unavailable in the Cursed Chasm. However! With your skills there is one ‘but,’ which I will voice later.”
A bird’s-eye view of a village materialized beneath our feet. The camera suddenly dropped down and focused on a crow picking an eye from a corpse. My heart dropped into my heels from the suddenness of it. Many others reeled and some even fell to the floor.
Paying no attention to the contestants’ reactions, the gamesmaster continued:
“The Cursed Chasm is a place in the northern Commonwealth. Along with its neighboring territories, it is cut off from the rest of the world and from Disgardium. Put simply, it is stuck between Dis and the Underworld. There has been only one way to get there since the days when the fell hooves of demons corrupted the land! Highborn elves keep the demonic knowledge, and once a year, they can send the spirits of the worthiest players to the Cursed Chasm to determine who among them is the best! The one who will join the ranks of the Demon Fighters! The losers will forever lose a portion of their life force to the champion!”
I remembered the words I read in History of the Demonic Games — “Champions of the Demonic Games make the best tanks. Mogwai is the most memorable example.”
“The Games are not limited by time until Eynyon’s Gong strikes,” Octius continued. “And strike it will not until the final top 10% of surviving contestants has been determined! From that moment, the chance that Eynyon’s Gong will strike will increase significantly and will grow with each passing day.”
“I just hope I survive that long!” Meister the gnome whined dreamily.
“Yeah, getting into the top 10% would be awesome!” someone agreed with him. “And the bonuses…”
“There are two main changes!” Octius interrupted him, raising a finger. “The first: you start the Games with the Amnesia debuff. This is the very ‘but’ that I mentioned before. Everyone starts from absolute zero, with no skills whatsoever! Congratulations, you’ve forgotten them!”
A buzz spread among the contestants. Guy Barron chuckled, snapped his fingers and a Seal of Silence descended on us.
“I wasn’t the one who came up with it! Our marketers are always looking for ways to add some variety to the event, to make it even more fun for the audience. Last year, many complained that the Games were imbalanced; although all were made equal, the combat classes leveled up faster thanks to their skills, which made the game less interesting to watch. Yes, yes, I know. This isn’t what you prepared for… Surprise!” Octius screwed up his face, then smiled. “But there’s good news: your first loot is guaranteed to be a Memory Scroll, which will restore your lost skills. As usual, they will be locked for now.”
Thinking for a moment, he clicked his fingers again. The Seal of Silence lifted and Meister was the first to realize it:
“What if I can’t kill anyone? What if they kill me?”
“Then you will be considered to have touched the astral plane in the space between worlds, and thus returned your memory,” Octius chuckled. “Alright, that’s enough of that. The second innovation concerns the structure of the Pitfall. Though previously the level bosses defended the passageway to the lower tiers, now…” Octius spread his hands. “Our designers have reviewed that situation. And so, ground level is considered level zero. Starting there, the Pitfall is split into 666 levels. Each floor is approximately twenty yards in height. You can go down a spiral staircase all the way to the bottom of the Pitfall if you so desire — there are no mobs on the stairs. The entryway to each floor is blocked by gates protected by a boss sealed within them. As a rule, the boss is of the same kind as the mobs that inhabit that level, but is far stronger than they. Bear in mind that the boss always aggros on the one who removes the seal.”
“Let’s mob them all together!” someone shouted.
Octius shook his head.
“Not so fast. Don’t forget, the boss scales depending on number of opponents. With diminishing returns, however.”
“What does that mean in human speak?” someone shouted.
Octius smirked. “One on one with the boss — its strength is equal to X. If two attack the same boss, his strength will be X times two. But if four attack, that number won’t be doubled, but will be somewhere around X times three point nine. And so on.”
“Now I get it, thanks,” the same man mumbled. “I need a calculator and a shot of dwarven whiskey for this!”
>
“Just keep in mind that reasonable teamplay will make the bosses easier.”
“What do you mean ‘reasonable’?” Anna asked.
“The passageway into the dungeon narrows beyond the gates. And the deeper you go, the narrower it gets. For level one, for example, I would recommend no more than a hundred people. And for level three hundred — a maximum of forty. And only in a balanced group.”
“Hey!” a dark-skinned orc next to me suddenly growled. “I like these new rules! Now we don’t have to complete every level, right? We can go straight to level 10, say?”
“That I don’t recommend, unless you’re wanting to get out of here soon,” the gamesmaster replied. “Remember, the mobs don’t respawn. If you don’t get experience from mobs at your own level, you’ll be sorry; you need to equip yourself from nothing, and it’s easier to beat gear out of opponents your own size. In addition, the demons’ strength leaps up every ten levels…”
Octius spent more time talking about the bosses, then reminded us of the grand prize: not only Concentrated Life Essence, but also the lifelong Demon Fighter perk. The losers would be afflicted with the Hell’s Curse debuff — 1% of the health of each is given to the champion. In addition, he mentioned two ways to win the Games: as part of a raid group that defeats the final boss, or as the sole survivor by the end of the Games. Nobody had yet accomplished the former.
“And one last surprise for the newcomers. In the Cursed Chasm, the pain is real! There are no pain filters at all, so keep that in mind.”
An unhappy murmur spread through the onlookers, but Octius ignored it and raised his voice:
“On that note, the briefing is ended. Let the Demonic Games begin!”
And we were taken to an area out of time. We all found ourselves in a forest glade surrounded by burnt tree trunks. The interface didn’t show up in this strange place. I quickly looked myself over and swore under my breath — the Cursed Cripple debuff was active.
A tall and stately elf stood before us — Eynyon, king of the elves.
“The stars shine on the hour of our meeting, brave ones! You have the hearts of lions! With pain in my heart and hope in my soul, I open the way to the Cursed Chasm!”
He spread his arms wide, clapped and pointed to a portal burning amid the trees.
“I wish you fair wind and good hunting! And may the leaves of your trees of life never yellow!”
The contestants exchanged glances and started running through the portal one after another.
Chapter 5. A Herald Summoned
I WAS THE LAST to pass through the burning portal despite my best efforts. The curse of worst player began its work in the elvish glade: my knees bent, my legs failed beneath me, my arms weakened.
Things looked bleak; prizes were given to the worst player every day, and even Trixie could have figured out that the ‘lucky’ recipient of all those rewards would be Scyth. I had to somehow fundamentally change the strategies I’d worked out, although a lot would depend on which abilities I was left with.
Dragging myself through the reddish-black veil, I fell into a space between worlds, hung suspended in the great nothing. Fiery text appeared out of thin air:
Summoned one!
You have been incarnated in the Cursed Chasm with the following characteristics:
Scyth, level 1 Summoned Herald
Main characteristics:
Strength: 3.
Perception: 6.
Endurance: 5.
Charisma: 4.
Intellect: 6.
Agility: 7.
Luck: 51.
Not counting the heavy skew toward luck, the situation was awful. My training with Hairo and Roj hadn’t helped — you can’t become an athlete in just a few days. What about the rest?
Secondary characteristics:
Health: 65.
Mana: 78.
Spirit: 100.
Defense: 1.5.
Health restoration rate: 5 per minute.
Mana restoration rate: 6 per minute.
Spirit restoration rate: 1 per second.
Base damage: 6.
Spell strength bonus: 6%.
Movement speed bonus: 7%.
Dodge bonus: 3.5%.
Carrying capacity: 70 pounds.
Merchant discount: 4%.
Critical hit chance: 7%.
Skills and abilities:
You have forgotten all your skills and abilities. Use a Memory Scroll to recall them. Your character’s death will also return the memories of your lost skills.
Judging by my pathetic spirit restoration rate, my beast protector the owl was cut off from the Cursed Chasm. Shame.
A mechanical voice spoke in my head, explaining the numbers:
“These values have been calculated based on the average metrics of all contestants, where the number ‘5’ indicates the average. The stats strength, perception, endurance and agility have been calculated based on the parameters of your real body. Your charisma is based on an analysis of your personality type. Intellect is based on corresponding testing. Since luck cannot be calculated objectively, it is based on your character’s luck stat in Disgardium.
I listened to the monotonous explanations and then tried to skip the intro or look around, but I couldn’t see any control buttons and had no body. Just pure consciousness in a cold and endless vacuum…
As if reading my thoughts, the system brought up a message on the edge of view:
Demonic Games starting in: 09:14… 09:13…
Please be patient! Location generating.
That meant it was pointless to hurry for the portal and try to get there before the others. I mentally addressed the system and asked it to tell me what my stats influenced. What was charisma good for, for example? There weren’t even any quests.
“Charisma influences discounts offered by the merchants of the Cursed Chasm.”
“Strength?”
“Strength influences the contestant’s physical base damage, carrying capacity and defense. In addition, special equipment and weaponry requires high strength.”
“Makes sense. A weedy mage in plate armor would be kind of unfair,” I said, continuing the inner dialog. “That always bothered me in Dis.”
“This limitation existed in the first years,” the system answered, as if it was a sentient creature. “However, over time, even the non-combat classes achieved the required amount of strength. There is no direct block on wearing heavy equipment, but a range of epic and legendary items can be used only by specific classes. Would you like me to describe the other stats?”
“Go ahead!”
“Perception affects your visual acuity, attentiveness, ability to see hidden things and critical hit chance. Endurance affects your total health, the rate at which you spend vigor and your health restoration rate. Intellect affects your total mana and its regeneration speed, and your spellcasting speed. Agility affects your movement speed, attack speed, dodge and critical damage. And, finally, luck!” the voice declared triumphantly. “I do not know a single property of this characteristic that can affect anything whatsoever!”
“Tell that to Fortune…” I thought in annoyance.
“What?”
“Nothing. So luck doesn’t even change my loot?”
“All loot is generated with this version of the Cursed Chasm. It does not matter who picks it up.”
At the mention of loot, I remembered the class penalty on my inventory: -90% inventory volume. That could be a problem in the Games…
“By the way, which bag do I start with?”
“Contestants begin with the standard version, with sixteen slots. However, your Treasure Hunter’s Bag is bound to your soul and will remain with you.
“Great!” I sighed in relief. “Back to luck. What’s the stat good for then?”
“That is a great mystery,” the mechanical voice answered. “I surmise that this stat may be used when generating rewards for the best and worst contestants of the day.”
&n
bsp; “Isn’t Octius the one who hands them out? In the real world?”
“Only on opening day. All the following rewards will be determined at random and applied to the contestant in the Cursed Chasm.”
“How do I raise my stats?”
“Each time you level up, your character gets one free point to spend and another one point for class characteristics. For the Herald class, this means charisma and luck. In addition, it is prudent to…”
Just great. I could tell I was going to end the Games with a huge imbalance — charming and lucky, but weak, frail and clumsy.
The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series Page 10